Category Archives: Deontology and Moral Responsibility
Nicholas Hatzis, ‘Lying, Speech and Impersonal Harm’
ABSTRACT Should the law punish the mere utterance of lies even if the listener has not been deceived? Seana Shiffrin has recently answered this question in the affirmative, arguing that pure lying as such harms the moral fabric of sincerity and distorts the testimonial warrants which underpin communication. The article begins with a discussion of […]
‘I Pity The Fool: Ori Herstein’s Defense of the Klutz’
Ori J Herstein, Nobody’s Perfect: Moral Responsibility in Negligence, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, volume XXXII, no 1 (February 2019), pp 109-125. The sad story of Menlove, the defendant in the English case Vaughn v Menlove is well known to all first-year torts students. Menlove was born, according to his lawyer, with the ‘misfortune […]
Smith and Neznamov, ‘It’s Not the Robot’s Fault! Russian and American Perspectives on Responsibility for Robot Harms’
ABSTRACT As automated vehicles, personal robots, and other cyberphysical systems enter our world, law must confront important questions about civil liability for harms caused by these systems. Two legal scholars – one from Russia and one from the United States – come together to tackle these questions with an integrated approach that draws on the […]
Wilthagen and Schoots, ‘Building TrusTee: The World’s Most Trusted Robot’
ABSTRACT This essay explores the requirements for building trustworthy robots and artificial intelligence by drawing from various scientific disciplines and taking human values as the starting-point. It also presents a research and impact agenda. Wilthagen, Ton and Schoots, Marieke, Building TrusTee: The World’s Most Trusted Robot (November 14, 2019). First posted 2019-11-30 08:19:42
Tim Murphy, ‘Natural Law and Natural Justice: A Thomistic Perspective’
ABSTRACT This chapter offers Thomistic accounts of natural law and natural justice that differ in important respects from other accounts often associated with Aquinas. The discussion begins by considering Aristotle’s taxonomy of justice in the Nicomachean Ethics and adopted by Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae. This view of justice does not emphasise rules or norms […]
Iria Giuffrida, ‘Liability for AI Decision-Making: Some Legal and Ethical Considerations’
ABSTRACT The creation and commercialization of these systems raise the question of how liability risks will play out in real life. However, as technical advancements have outpaced legal actions, it is unclear how the law will treat AI systems. This Article briefly addresses the legal ramifications and liability risks associated with reliance on – or […]
Gerhard Wagner, ‘Robot, Inc: Personhood for Autonomous Systems?’
ABSTRACT Since the invention of the steam engine, technological progress has served as a driver of innovation for liability systems. Pertinent examples include the arrival of the railway and the introduction of motor-powered vehicles. Today, the digital revolution challenges established legal axioms more fundamentally than technological innovations from earlier times. The development of robots and […]
‘Legal Theory Lexicon: Virtue Jurisprudence’
“Law students with a background in philosophy are sure to notice the strong influence of moral philosophy on legal thinking. Theories like Kant’s moral philosophy have had a profound influence on the idea of fairness and on the conception of rights that is at the heart of deontological legal theory. Utilitarianism and the law reform […]
Giovanni Tuzet, ‘Calabresi and Mill’
ABSTRACT The paper asks four questions: (1) Is the bilateralism of law and economics praised by Calabresi a form of ‘reflective equilibrium’? (2) Is Mill’s harm principle compatible with ‘third-party moral costs’? (3) How are we to distinguish the moral externalities that are to be given weight from those that are not? (4) How are […]
‘Why Reparation?’
Sandy Steel, Compensation and Continuity, Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper (July 20, 2019), available at SSRN. ‘Wrongdoers may incur duties to compensate the victims of their wrongs.’ This, the opening sentence of Sandy Steel’s Compensation and Continuity, sounds like a truism. Who would deny it? It’s hard to imagine the defendant in a normal tort […]